China is letting in foreign firms, but will the financial market really be open?
Analysts say recent flurry of activity is a response to looming trade war with the United States, but Beijing insists it is expanding access on its own terms
China’s financial regulators are fast-tracking approvals for foreign firms to access some parts of the market, as Beijing tries to reposition itself as an “open” advocate of “free trade” amid an escalating row with the United States.
In the last week alone, state media reported that the central bank had received an application from London-based payment service provider WorldFirst to operate in China, a segment that both Visa and Mastercard failed to crack in the last decade.
The stock market regulator meanwhile may soon allow UBS to take a controlling stake in a Chinese brokerage, giving the Swiss investment bank an opportunity Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley pursued unsuccessfully for years. And Dublin-based Experian could be granted a licence to collect and provide corporate credit information in China – a licence that even Chinese firms find it hard to get from the People’s Bank of China.
Beijing’s flurry of activity has been seen by some analysts as a response to the looming trade war with the US, but Chinese officials say the country is widening access to the market according to its own agenda and on its own terms.